During the past few decades, the agricultural industry underwent many changes ranging from the increased use of technology to boost production to the slow, but constant erosion of the family farm not only in the United States, but in other countries as well. To date, agriculture remains one of the most hazardous industries in the United States and other countries. The occupational environment for this industry continues to present a wide variety of hazards to workers, including chemical exposures, noise, organic dusts, psychological stresses, and physical and mechanical exposures that may result in traumatic injury.
Traumatic injury and death arise from interaction with machinery used in farms, product assembly plants, or the like where heavy equipment is involved to perform the various tasks. For example, one of the major identifiable sources of traumatic injuries in the area of agriculture is due to power take off (PTO) and attachments to tractors, followed by other machinery such as harvesting machines. Countless numbers of traumatic injuries were reported in other areas such as assembly plants. For example, heavy machinery operators are exposed to the risks associated with moving machinery, and machinery having moving parts.
Further, old and unsafe machinery and equipment cause unnecessary injuries and death. Machines that have been improved over the years are usually safer to operate than older equipment. Agricultural areas often lack emergency treatment facilities and skilled personnel to attend to such injuries. Injury reducing design technologies are often available, but are not widely used because of a lack of hazard recognition and also because of enormous costs involved to prevent such injuries. Most of the agricultural workers are out in the field and installation of sophisticated surveillance and injury prevention equipment such as those used in huge assembly plants is impractical.
Various approaches to prevent traumatic injuries in an assembly or manufacturing plant, such as, for example, an automobile assembly plant, include installation of sophisticated equipment by custom designing such equipment which may cost upwards of hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. However, such costly and sophisticated surveillance and injury prevention systems may be afforded only by companies having such large sums of money to invest. Such sophisticated and expensive systems are beyond the reach of a small business owner or manufacturer, especially agricultural workers operating tractors, harvesting machines, and such, and also owners of small mechanical assembly plants that supply small parts to multinational companies.
Thus, there is a need for a cost effective, yet practical solution to overcome the traumatic injuries and deaths of workers operating various kinds of machinery.